The Mary Sue Matrix
by Bohemian Jo
Summary: A group of vagrants are on the lookout for highly-rated Mary Sue targets in the world of fandom when they stumble upon Spot Conlon, who just might be The One they've been looking for. PG-13 for language and unintelligible humor.
1. Brooklyn, 1900

AN: Me no own, so you no sue. Okeedokee? Spot belongs to. Disney (along with one fifth of the world), and everything else is property of their respective owners.  
  
-----  
  
Spot tapped his cane against his leg as he sauntered across the Brooklyn Bridge. Something seemed oddly familiar about this day, the world around him, even the way the black clouds seemed to engulf the darkening sky. A shiver ran through his spine as he attempted to shake off that feeling, but it wouldn't leave him.  
  
He tried to put it out of his mind as he focused on the last poker game he had just played, a game from which he was heading away from, a game in which he had lost spectacularly against, of all people, Specs. He fumed as he recalled Specs' cocky grin looming over a straight flush, and the defeat that must have been apparent on his own face when he placed down nothing but a pair of kings. How could he have been so stupid? He may have been called many things, but King of Poker was not one of them.  
  
A whimpering noise came from an alley not far from him. At first, Spot ignored it. Probably some stupid mutt. But his eyes wandered down the alley and what he saw was definitely not a dog.  
  
There was a girl in the alley. Not just a girl, in fact, but a girl and two large, surly looking men. They were advancing on her, one holding a bat and one adjusting the brass knuckles on his hand. Spot stood there like an idiot, not knowing whether to jump in and possibly die or to stand back and have the girl die. In any other situation, it would've been an easy decision to make, but he couldn't just let her sit there, helpless.  
  
Spot ran in with both fists flying. Not that he was the most skilled fighter, nor the toughest, but a few handy props would help him to win this fight. He grabbed his cane like a baseball bat and swung at one of the men, sending him tumbling back into a set of crates. The man with the bat took aim at his head, when Spot swung his cane below him and hit the man right between the legs.  
  
"Run!" hissed Spot to the girl behind him as the bat dropped out of the man's hands and he fell to his knees. The girl looked at him with terrified eyes, her mouth slightly open and her hand clutching at the collar of her dress.  
  
"Just run, dammit! Go!" Spot yelled. Her doe eyes fluttered softly.  
  
The girl collapsed on the ground, unconscious.  
  
"Oh, Jesus Christ..." Spot muttered, and turned his attention back to the men. One of them lay inert on a heap of boxes and splinters of wood. The other was still bent over on his knees.  
  
"Get the hell outta here!" Spot shouted impatiently. The man looked up with a glare that contorted his entire face, stuck out his lower lip, and let the saliva fly from his mouth and onto Spot's shoe.  
  
A sickening crack was heard as Spot's cane struck his face. He grabbed the girl around the knees, threw her over his shoulder, and fled from the alley.  
  
-----  
  
"We've found one."  
  
"Where is he located?"  
  
"Brooklyn, 1900."  
  
"Jesus, 104 years ago? Those confounded MSA's never make it easy on us," a woman muttered.  
  
"Gypsy, this guy's radar is going off the scale! Apparently hundreds of them have made their mark. And what's worse, he's got a new one with him," the other one remarked, pointing at the screen.  
  
"What?!" Gypsy screeched. She looked at the screen again.  
  
"This is bad, Gyps."  
  
"Yeah, no shit Jester," Gypsy cursed. She looked around anxiously.  
  
"Get Hyland in here." 


	2. Capturing the Victim

AN: Um... I was going to say... something. Never mind. Just read. OH!!! Credit to Gypsy and Hyland for creative inspiration.  
  
Dakki: Yeah, about the million-point-two words on her appearance... I couldn't bring myself to do it. Though there's a bit of it in this chapter...  
  
Everyone: Thank you for your loverly comments! I'm glad to see that there's interest in the story -glows-  
  
-----  
  
Unable to pawn the responsibility of taking care of the girl off to the other newsies upon arrival to the Brooklyn Lodging House, Spot disdainfully set her on his own bed.  
  
"Peachy. Looks like another night on the chair," he muttered, setting his cap over his eyes as he sat down on a chair beside his bed.  
  
Just as Spot began to drift off, he heard a small moan from the bed.  
  
"Where... Where am I?" Spot lifted his cap to see the girl looking around, obviously horrified and confused. He had been here before. He had seen those stormy gray-green-blue eyes before, which were glowing a magnificent blue in her terror.  
  
"You're in Brooklyn," he said. She continued to let her eyes wander around the room.  
  
"But, what is this place? Where... where is everyone? Mother..." she whimpered and covered her face with the blanket.  
  
"Look, yer in a lodging house. Ever seen one before?" Spot asked. The girl shook her head beneath the blanket.  
  
"Figures... See, I found you, alright? In an alley with these two guys... don't worry, they didn't do anything to ya, and you didn't do much either," he said acidly.  
  
"Who are you?" she asked, her eyes darkening to a forest green.  
  
"Spot... Conlon," he said, almost stopping himself. Hadn't he already told this girl his name?  
  
"I'm Maria. Did you save me?"  
  
"Well... if you want to put it that way. I guess so, yeah," he shrugged. It wasn't much, he had done it before. Hadn't he? Maria's eyes faded to a warm and friendly hazel brown  
  
She shook her long, chestnut brown hair out of her face, stood up, and walked over to him...  
  
-----  
  
"It's going in. It's going to make its move," Jester said, focusing in on the screen.  
  
"Go. NOW!" Gypsy yelled frantically, slamming her hands on the control panel. She pushed one of the levers up to full power.  
  
"We're not going to make it in time, something's wrong," Jester said. "The ship, it's malfunctioning. Dammit, it's already there!"  
  
"Hyland! What the hell did you do to the ship?!" Gypsy screamed. A man rushed into the room, sliding on the steel floor and coming to a stop right in front of Gypsy. She looked up at him with a glare that could kill.  
  
"Don't you understand? Every time this happens he gets weaker! And if it happens one more time... he won't be himself anymore! They've sent out their strongest pair, and one of them has already gotten to him!" Gypsy yelled desperately.  
  
"I'm sorry! I don't know what's wrong with the ship, it must be having trouble..." Hyland began to say, but was cut out by a loud shriek.  
  
"SHIT! It left a mark! We're too late!" Jester shouted. Gypsy and Hyland ran over to the screen and the three gave each other disgusted looks as Maria placed her lips on Spot's cheek.  
  
"Eeeeeeeeew..." was the collective reply to the nauseating image on the screen.  
  
"Quick! Pull him out," Gypsy said. Jester pushed on a red lever and the ship lowered directly on top of the lodging house. A mechanical arm came out through the bottom of the ship and struck through the roof.  
  
"What the..." Spot yelled before the arm's steel fingers took hold of him, lifted him from the chair, and through the hole in the roof.  
  
"Hey! Let go! Maria? MARIA!" Spot yelled, attempting to look beneath him. A piece of debris from the roof had struck Maria and knocked her to the ground. Her eyes were open, but they were bright red. It was the last thing he saw before the ship closed in around him. 


	3. Of NES Guns and TicTacs

AN: Yes. Tic-tacs. Read it and enjoy the minty freshness. Props to Gypsy for coming up with the ship's name.  
  
Falco: PIPPIN SINGING!!! It made me cry -sniffles- I mean... um... Yeah, red eyes. It'll be explained later...  
  
Kez: Longer chapter? Well, I smooshed two of them together for this one, so here you go!  
  
Hotshot: Glad you like the story... but don't die! That would be, ehm... really bad. Hee, this will differ from the movies quite a bit, it's just that the beginning sounded like, well... The Matrix.  
  
Gypsy: You crazy nut... -shakes head-  
  
-----  
  
He dropped to the ground as the arm let him go, and he looked around him, bewildered and scared shitless.  
  
"Gyps! Ahoy, we got him!" Hyland said as he grabbed Spot by the arm and pulled him up. "And welcome aboard The Space Monkey."  
  
"Hey! Let go of me! You... you... just let me go!" He struggled violently against Hyland's grip, but Hyland wouldn't budge.  
  
"Oh, quit yer whinging, you pansy!" Jester yelled from the control panel, pulling back on the red lever and ascending into the sky. Gypsy walked over to Spot and Hyland, an annoyed look on her face.  
  
"You just never know when to quit, do you? You have absolutely no idea what these things are doing to you..." she muttered and led them into a small room, Spot kicking and screaming the whole way.  
  
"Hey, Gyps!" Jester called out.  
  
"Yeah?" Gypsy asked, sticking her head out of the doorway.  
  
"Catch." Jester tossed an NES gun to her. "You might need it."  
  
"Thanks."  
  
Hyland had managed to strap Spot into a chair by his ankles, though his hands were still free and trying desperately to free his feet as well.  
  
"What the hell is this? It's not rope. And where the hell am I? What are you trying to do to me?" Spot asked desperately. Gypsy sat down calmly across from him. She held out both of her hands, and in her palms were two pill-shaped objects, one orange, one green.  
  
"Pick one," she said.  
  
"What?" Spot asked, confused.  
  
"Just pick one, already, you flibbertigibbet," Hyland muttered through his teeth.  
  
"Flibberti-what?" Spot asked.  
  
"PICK ONE, DAMMIT!" they both yelled. Gypsy's eye twitched, and Hyland looked severely annoyed.  
  
Spot hesitantly stuck his hand out and reached for the green one. He looked at it with confusion.  
  
"Put it in your mouth and wait." Spot looked at Gypsy warily, but placed the green object in his mouth and waited. It slowly began to dissolve, leaving an odd taste in his mouth. He breathed in, and found the air surprisingly cold against his throat.  
  
"What was that for?" he said.  
  
"Your breath. They're called Tic-Tacs," Hyland said, and he motioned for the three of them to leave the room.  
  
As they exited the small room, Jester swiveled around in her chair. "Oi! Which one did he pick?" she called out across the main deck.  
  
"Spearmint," Gypsy said.  
  
"He picked the green one? What the crap?! I've lost all respect for you. Even a feckin' BABY would've picked orange over spearmint," Jester muttered. But Spot didn't seem to pay her any attention. He was too fascinated by the minty freshness that now inhabited his mouth.  
  
"Spot, do you know what a Mary Sue Author is?" Gypsy asked.  
  
"A what?"  
  
"Oi, this is going to take a lot of work," Jester sighed, leaning back in her chair and spinning around in circles.  
  
"A Mary Sue Author is a rejected scientist from the 20th century. They were researching stem cells and different cloning methods when a precocious yet seemingly charming 10 year-old girl by the name of Jewel was used in an cloning experiment. When the government found out about the use of a child in a scientific experiment, the Mary Sue Authors were exiled to a remote island near the equator. They have since attempted to recreate this experiment, and the products of such experiments have been far and varied, but with one similarity..." Gypsy explained, and was cut off rudely.  
  
"Yeah, they're all a prissy bunch of bimbos," Jester injected.  
  
"Exactly. They all possess an obscene amount of so-called perfect qualities, which are often very conflicting. Examples of these would be impeccable appearances as well as lack of care for appearances, masculinity as well as femininity, and bilingualism as well as the incapability of speaking in any other accent but a New York accent."  
  
"I think you've just described every single one of my girlfriends," Spot said, rubbing his temples.  
  
"Oh! Goodie! Are we getting through to the whoremonger yet?" Hyland said sarcastically. Spot glared at him.  
  
"And what does this all have to do with me, exactly?" Spot asked.  
  
"What does it have to do with you? Are you daft? Have you not noticed that they have TARGETED YOU? Why do you think you're always finding lost rich girls in the alley? Or orphans who randomly show up at the lodging house? Are you completely oblivious to the fact that you are..." Hyland began ranting, but was cut off by Gypsy with a warning stare.  
  
"Not yet, Hyland. He doesn't need to know yet," she told him. "Look, Spot, you're one of the most highly-rated Mary Sue targets in fandom. Every time you find one, they will begin to take more and more out of your character until you're barely recognizable. You will become..."  
  
"A romantic lead," Hyland spat acidly.  
  
"Harsh..." Jester said. "Poor kid."  
  
"Wait, a what? A ROMANTIC LEAD?! But... that's Jack. Or Mush. Or... not me! I'm not the romantic lead! I'm the fearless leader of Brooklyn, not some flower-carrying poem-reciting song-singing."  
  
"Pansy?" Jester interjected.  
  
"Damn straight!" Spot said.  
  
"You better get to sleep. We start training tomorrow," Hyland suggested, and with a "pop" from the NES gun, he disappeared. Gypsy pointed it at Jester, who also disappeared with a "pop", before turning it on herself and leaving Spot alone on the middle of the main deck.  
  
"Wait, training for what? Where do I go? What the..." Spot ranted, before realizing he was alone. 


	4. Mary Sue Resistance Training

AN: Heil the potato. And boogie down.  
  
-----  
  
"Find yer room alright, sunshine?"  
  
Spot opened his eyes to find a curious pair of eyes peering at him behind a pair of spectacles, and a mess of brown hair falling into his face.  
  
"WHOAH!" Spot screamed and fell off his cot and began backing away from Jester, who was hanging precariously from his ceiling by her ankles.  
  
"Well, aren't you the morning person?" she said. She swung herself back up and clutched the piece of piping that her feet were attached to, slid her feet out, and landed on his bed.  
  
"Breakfast is ready. Go out to the main deck," she told him. As he put on his shirt and his wool trousers, Jester pulled his blanket over her head and promptly fell asleep.  
  
As he walked out to the main deck, he saw Gypsy and Hyland standing on two spinning chairs, clutching each others hands and attempting to swing each other from one side of the room to the other. As Hyland let Gypsy go, she flew across the main deck and right past Spot.  
  
"Hey, thanks for the hat!" she called. Spot put his hands on his head and found his hat to be missing. Meanwhile, Gypsy was wearing his hat and using his cane to push her chair back around the main deck.  
  
"This place is crazy," Spot muttered and served himself some of what was stewing in the pot.  
  
"My, you have a keen grasp of the obvious," Hyland said.  
  
"Yeah, thanks, whatever that means." Gypsy and Hyland gave each other sidelong glances. "By the way, what IS this?"  
  
"Mashed potatoes with cheese sauce," Gypsy stated matter-of-factly.  
  
"Ah, I don't eat potatoes. Don't like the texture."  
  
A loud WHAM was heard as the door to Spot's room slammed open and Jester stormed out.  
  
"Don't... eat... POTATOES??" she screeched. She looked at Gypsy and Hyland, her eyes bulging out of her head. She made pointing motions and mouthed unintelligible curses in Spot's direction.  
  
"She says 'Suck it up and deal', Spot," Hyland translated. "It's all they'll make, those Russian-Jew wannabes."  
  
"Who are you calling a Russian-Jew WANNABE?!" Gypsy hissed. Jester looked severely put out.  
  
"I like potatoes," she sniffed.  
  
"Yeah, well I happen to like Reeses... couldn't we get any of THOSE at Costco before we left?" Hyland muttered.  
  
"What's Cofscoah?" Spot asked, potatoes spewing from his mouth as he spoke.  
  
"And what happened to your anti-potato campaign, you corporate slave?" Jester sneered disdainfully.  
  
"Are we going to start the training or not?" Gypsy asked, tapping her foot impatiently. Jester sat down in her spinning chair, which Gypsy had kicked in her direction, and spun off to the control panel at the front of the ship.  
  
"Training for what, exactly?" Spot asked, finishing off his potatoes as a rather threatening-looking chair lowered from the ceiling.  
  
"Mary Sue Resistance," Hyland answered. "You will have to learn to resist the magnetic pull of the Mary Sues. These are only a few simulations that I have created, your basic Mary Sues, but it's enough." He motioned for Spot to sit in the chair, and Spot went cautiously.  
  
"Let him in," Jester said from the control panel, and Gypsy placed a large headset over Spot's face.  
  
"Wait, I can't see anything, what is this..."  
  
But Spot was cut short, for at that second he was no longer on the main deck, but in a vast white space. There was nothing that he could see. He quickly turned around and was stunned to find Jester, Gypsy, and Hyland all standing there, watching him with amused smiles on their faces.  
  
"Welcome to the Mary Sue Resistance training," Gypsy said. The three of them snapped their fingers and a mass of buildings came rushing towards them.  
  
"SHIT!" Spot yelled and ducked, but no sooner had he done that when he looked down and saw a crudely paved ground beneath his feet. He looked up, and there he was, not two steps away from the lodging house. He was in Brooklyn, but he couldn't see Jester, Gypsy, or Hyland anywhere.  
  
"Am I... back home? Man, that was a bizarre dream..." he mumbled to himself. He began to head back to the lodging house when he heard an ear- piercing scream come from a nearby alley.  
  
Spot whipped around. He looked to his right, when he heard the scream again.  
  
"Shit... not again!" he said. He ran down the street, looking down every alley till he saw a girl, with two menacing looking men standing over her.  
  
"Maria?" he whispered. "HEY!" he yelled, before running down the alley to fight them off.  
  
BIZZAP.  
  
An electrical shock went right down Spot's spine and stopped him in his tracks. "OW! What the HELL was that?"  
  
"A mental cattle prod, if you will," said a voice above him. Jester was sitting on a fire escape, letting her feet dangle above the ground, watching Spot bemusedly.  
  
"Crazy psycho bitch..." he muttered before heading towards Maria again.  
  
BIZZAP.  
  
"DAMMIT! What the hell are you trying to do to me? I have to save her!" Spot yelled.  
  
"Says who? Why should she live?" Hyland said, sticking his head out from a window above them.  
  
"What are you talking about?"  
  
"You're not very good at resisting Mary Sues, mate," Hyland sighed.  
  
"But... but I can't just leave her there, she's so helpless," Spot argued.  
  
BIZZAP.  
  
"You have to stop thinking like that, toots," Jester said condescendingly.  
  
"Will you PLEASE stop trying to fry me to death?" Spot grimaced, glaring up at Jester. "I don't care what you guys say, I have to help her," he said, looking over at Maria. One of the men had grabbed her by the collar and was pressing her up against the wall. Spot stood up and began to drag himself over to her.  
  
"What are you going to do Spot? Save them all?" Gypsy said behind him. Spot spun around to find Gypsy standing calmly in the middle of the street. She smiled.  
  
Another scream was heard in the streets. Spot stood there dumbstruck for a moment, before running out of the alley and down the street. In the next alley there was another girl, surrounded by a whole gang of men. They were pulling at her clothing as she writhed and struggled against them.  
  
There was another scream. Spot ran away from the alley, past Maria, and looked in the next one. Another scream sounded in the streets. And then another, and then another. Endless cries echoed into the street and countless moans were heard from every side.  
  
"What... what are you doing?" Spot whispered. "Make it stop! Gypsy, make it stop!" he yelled, running over and grabbing her by the collar. With a snap of her fingers, the streets disappeared and the screams faded.  
  
"Echo! Echo!" Hyland yelled out to the vast white expanse.  
  
"You..." Jester said, pointing at Spot. "SUCKED. I've never seen anyone fail their training that badly, most of them get the hint after awhile."  
  
"Oh, Jester, quit it..." Gypsy groaned. She pulled out the NES gun and with a "pop", the four of them disappeared. 


End file.
